Posted on 02/01/2019 9:33:13 PM PST by vannrox
The seventies get a bad rap. When people talk about the decade, they focus on all the embarrassing stuff like Pet Rocks, Watergate, shag carpeting, and disco music. Sure, there was a lot about the 70s that was cringe-worthy. But it also had some of the most colorful, over the top slang of the 20th century. And if you don’t believe us, well baby, you can just keep on truckin.
Put on your best polyester suit, crank up the Bee Gees on your 8-track player, and revisit some of the best worst slang of the Me Decade. On the other side of this spectrum, take a look at 40 Words People Over 40 Won’t Understand.
The other side of today is tomorrow, so to catch you on the flip side means to see you again tomorrow. Yeah, we know, it doesn’t make sense to us either. And for more great out-dated slang, check out the terms from the 1950s that seem hilariously dated now.
Example: “I got to run, but I’ll catch you on the flip side.”
A solid is a favor because, um… favors aren’t liquid? When you do someone a solid, you’re helping them out in a big way.
Example: “Would you do me a solid and give me a ride to the airport?”
To dance, but to do so in an especially enthusiastic way. Ideally, while being accompanied by disco music.
Example: “That ABBA song makes me want to boogie down.”
When something is presented, and then quietly taken away. A taunting word for a jovial denial.
Example: “Oh, you want a piece of gum? Sure, here you go. (pulls it away.) Psyche!”
If you find a woman’s body especially attractive, you might say she was built like a brick house. As in: Well put together, proportionally perfect. If you want a brickhouse body, find out What Celebrities with Perfect Bodies Do Every Day.
Example: “That girl is so fine, she’s a brick house.”
When somebody is up in your business and they won’t leave you alone, just tell them to stop dipping in your Kool-Aid. Your Kool-Aid, in this equation, is your business, and the dipper is the person who won’t leave you alone.
Example: “I told you I don’t want to talk about my divorce. Stop dipping in my Kool-Aid.”
If someone is acting unusual or wacky, you could accuse them of being a fry. Were French fries especially kooky during the 70s? It appears so.
Example: “Did you hear that Steve went streaking last weekend? What a fry!”
An authority figure. It could mean the police, the government, or even your parents. Anyone with the power to take your fun away. And speaking of the Man, here are 20 U.S. Government Secrets They Don’t Want You to Know.
Example: “I wish I was doing better, but the Man is keeping me down.”
He’s not just a lovable dorky character in Meatballs. Being a spaz is a state of awkward, spastic, bumbling energy. If you’re spazzing out, you have lost all control of your limbs and anything approaching rational thinking.
Example: “Whoa, I think you’ve had too much coffee. Don’t be such a spaz!”
You’re not ordering a side dish at a barbecue place. Rather, it’s expression of approval.
Example: “Sure, I’d love to see a movie tonight. That’d be cool beans.”
When you’re talking to somebody on a CB radio and you want them to know you’ve heard what they just said. During the 70s, an actual CB radio was not required to use this slang. It wasn’t just truckers who wanted to talk like truckers.
Example: “10-4, good buddy. I hear you loud and clear.”
No such drug existed. The “chill pill” mentioned here is entirely figurative. However you do it, you need to caaaaalm down! If you need to chill, try this 24-Hour Guide to Stress Relief.
Example: “Hey, hey, take a chill pill, dude. You’re going to get us all killed!”
This insult from Fonzie on Happy Days pretended the slang’s origins were in the 50s. But actually, “sit on it”—a nicer way of saying “shut up”—didn’t catch on until the 70s.
Example: “I’ve had about enough from you. Sit on it!”
If someone isn’t all there, and their attention span is the equivalent of somebody floating through space, staring at nothing in particular, then they definitely qualify as a space cadet.
Example: “Take a look at that space cadet. He’s in his own little world.”
Again, not a slang term to be taken literally. There’s no eating involved. Instead, it connotes confusion. Whatever they’re trying to understand makes no sense to them. They must’ve been out to lunch when it was explained.
Example: “I have no idea what any of that means. I’m out to lunch.”
You want to call something bogus, but you don’t have time or energy to pronounce the “gus” part. It’s like Millennial speak, but with more chest hair.
Example: “He blew you off again? That’s bogue.”
When you want the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you ask for the skinny. Because, well, apparently the truth had a high metabolism in the 70s. If you’re trying to shed some pounds, check out the Single Greatest Way to Lose Weight at Work.
Example: “Yes I want to know who she was with last night. Give me the skinny!”
Yes, more slang for that.
Example: “You might want to leave the room. I just laid a gasser.”
When something is taken to the extreme, and it couldn’t possibly be more wild or crazy, you have reached the maximum level of awesomeness.
Example: “We’re gonna have some fun tonight to the max!”
Meant as an insult to disco dancers. Calling them Stella means you think they’re arrogant and full of themselves. Unless their name really is Stella, then your insult is just a friendly hello.
Example: “Naw, don’t invite her to the party. She’s a total Stella.”
Dig my herb.
#12. Re “I don’t remember the 60’s”? Why? Too much Gwangi, Mary Jane,Trippin’? It was a gas, as in tear gas.
However, I do know how you feel. I know there was a “sexual revolution” in the 60’s but I must have missed it somehow. Didn’t come to my part of the neighborhood.
Tubular!
>>you can just keep on truckin.
Keep on truckin’ is a slogan from 1968 “Zap Comix” by Robert Crumb.
Not 70s and Crumb was adapting it from 1930s vernacular in jazz and western-swing songs (he was collecting on 78s).
and yes that is the F-word being used in a 1930s RCA-Bluebird song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFcHD8XsCEc
I don’t understand the ones they still use WTF is “cool beans”?
"Far out" was sixties - not seventies.
I know that's a bummer, dude. You rock anyway.
Well dangit, I said it in the 70s.
711 Indian
Oh wait, that was Biden 2006.
It's older than the 70s and the full expression is "she's built like a brick sh!thouse"
(1953)
I was in my twenties during the seventies, and never heard those.
I'm a bit younger, but those were the two that were totally unfamiliar to me. A regional thing, perhaps.
WTF was “Dadley”?
Heh. You were probably in grade school. Us old farts had already quit using it.
I think I remember Officer Joe Friday using the expression sarcastically while giving a long-hair a good chewing out. Guy was all "you're bumming me out, man!" Friday just stared at him in disgust.
I turned 15 in 1970 so I think I could say that the ‘70s were my decade to be hip and cool. (two ‘70s slang terms they didn’t mention) But until now I had never heard ...
4 Psyche!
6 Stop dipping in my Kool-Aid
7 What a fry
16 Bogue
18 Lay a gasser
or
20 Stella
And while I’m at it, I never heard anyone use the pejorative “dillweed” which was prominent in the TV program “That ‘70s Show.”
For Men’s clothing, there used to be a name for pants that were too short. They were either called ‘Floods or High Water Pants. For women’s clothes, there were Hot Pants.
James Brown even made a song about them.
Some motorcycles have always been called Hogs.
VW’s have always been called Bugs.
**Diamond in the Back referred to vintage 1970-1980 Cadillacs.
The rear window had a diamond shape.
That was immortalized by one hit wonder, William DeVaughn’
in the song ‘Be Thankful for What You’ve Got.
Written and sung in the style of Curtis Mayfield.
Richard Pryor about doing LSD
That’s why I don’t drink so much. Take acid, either. White dudes take acid. They do. They take acid and go see “The Exorcist.” They crazy. White dude gave me some acid once at a party, too, jack. And I thought I was crazy before I took it. It saned me right up.
Dude say: [nerdy white dude’s voice] “This is far out.”
I said, “What?”
Says: [nerdy white dude’s voice] “It’s far bleepin’ out.”
I took it, jack. “You’re gonna be trippin’!”
‘Bout twenty minutes later, I was at the party: “Hey, blood, what’s happenin’? [mimes one half of a complex handshake for two brothers] Everything is cool. White dude gave me some stuff I’m gonna be trippin’! You know, I ain’t goin’ no place without my luggage. Believe that!
Look at this, man! I can catch my hand!
[eyes bug out, mouth opens wide,a high-pitched squeal] Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! [suddenly the squeal becomes low-pitched and Pryor starts moving– and talking — in slow motion]
Uh oh. I’ve got to get out of here! [running in very slow motion across home base, another high-pitched squeal] Whaaaaaaaa![suddenly stops, clutches his chest, in a normal but panicked voice]
I don’t remember how to breathe! I can’t breathe! [opens mouth, bobs head] One, two, three. Ain’t nothin’ happenin’, man!”
[nerdy white dude’s voice] “Told ya it was far out!”
>>Spaz - He’s not just a lovable dorky character in Meatballs. Being a spaz is a state of awkward, spastic, bumbling energy. If you’re spazzing out, you have lost all control of your limbs and anything approaching rational thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spasticus_Autisticus
“Spasticus Autisticus” is a song written by Ian Dury and co-written by Chaz Jankel, released both as a single and on the album Lord Upminster.
“Spasticus Autisticus” was written in 1981 as a protest against the International Year of Disabled Persons, which Dury considered to be patronising. Dury was himself disabled by polio contracted in his youth. Fed up with repeated requests to get involved with charitable causes, Dury wrote an “anti-charity” song.
The song was a cross between a battle cry and an appeal for understanding: “Hello to you out there in normal land. You may not comprehend my tale or understand.” The repeated refrain “I’m Spasticus, I’m Spasticus, I’m Spasticus Autisticus” made explicit reference to the line “I’m Spartacus” from the 1960 film Spartacus. Dury was considering touring under the name “Spastic and the Autistics” for the record, playing on his disability and the term “blockhead”, but his friend Ed Speight suggested that the song should be about the freed slave of the disabled.
The title and lyrics were deliberately provocative, as the word spastic, a name for sufferers of cerebral palsy and then used as the title for the charitable Spastics Society (now known as Scope), was becoming taboo in Britain due to its use as a derogatory term.
Well I lived through that era but only a couple of these did I ever hear actually used by any real people. Mostly this is stuff from movies and journalism, plus a few things (”cool beans” “do me a solid”) that could only ever be said by a geeky high school student trying to imagine they sounded cool.
Well, I think we can all cut Officer Joe Friday a bit of slack for not being on the cutting edge of 'hip'.
Yeah, I was into listening to Cheech and Chong then.
The best thing about being young and listening to Cheech and Chong, was it thoroughly killed any desire I ever had to try any drugs.
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